The Rise of Eco Fascism

I read William Golding’s superb book Lord of the Flies as a kid. It had a lasting impact. Especially about how the thin veneer of civilization, democracy, liberty and prevailing morality can be swept away by a brutish elitist power grab. It’s the same philosophy that resorts to threats to life and limb, property destruction, public smears, vilifying dissent, curtailing free speech and imposing un-democratic regulatory ‘laws’ to get its way.

We tend to associate these hallmarks of totalitarian intolerance, vicious rhetoric and Luddite terrorism with brown-shirted National Socialism in Nazi Germany, red-book toting Communism or radical Islamism; movements alien to Judeo-Christian-rooted Western culture. But all the same kind of rhetoric, threats to dissent and the push to circumvent the normal democratic processes are all much closer to home among the green-shirts of burgeoning eco-fascism.

A little harsh? Consider this.

Gaia Theorist and climate visionary James Lovelock has just become the latest high-profile alarmist to admit the movement never actually knew what it was talking about. Lovelock recanted his climate alarmist sins admitting, “The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing”. True enough. But previously Lovelock was one of many quite prepared to “put democracy on hold” for the cause (leftie code for ‘stopping you and I from having a say’ and them getting their way).

Since Lovelock’s defection, former alarmist colleagues have been busy trying to find a low-carbon emitting bus to throw him under. In his Forbes blog, environmental writer Steve Zwick claimed Lovelock is “not a climate scientist, let alone a contributor to the IPCC. Most climate scientists cringe when he starts to talk about the climate.” Shame he didn’t warn us before Lovelock went AWOL that he was really a non-believer all along. But then Zwick is intolerant only to those who disagree with him. Zwick’s combustible rhetoric resonates more with early National Socialism than with Lovelock’s restrained academia. Even as polar bears, penguins, glaciers and icy seas are all reportedly flourishing – all contrary to alarmist predictions – Zwick’s intolerance has an unmistakable Kristallnacht-style resonance. In his Forbes blog, Zwick demands, “Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn”. Shocked at reading back his own inflammatory rhetoric, Zwick feebly tries to damp down the public response in various addendum blogs.

Not that we should misrepresent him. Zwick does not advocate burning down the houses of sceptic’s now you understand. Zwick merely wants to exact revenge after the warming apocalypse breaks, advocating standing idly by as sceptics’ houses mysteriously spontaneously combust. I believe the KKK has a similar policy. A brief perusal of his Facebook page reveals Zwick is a ‘follower’ and defender of the character of Peter Gleick. Gleick, for the uninitiated, is the environmental scientist who recently hit the headlines as a proven liar when he impersonated a member of the Heartland Institute – whose crime was to disagree with Gleick on climate issues – to steal some of their documentation. It’s what eco-fascists don’t like to call ‘criminal deception’.

Journalist Alex Lockwood (in the leftwing UK Guardian) proposes “the internet should be nationalised as a public utility in order to contain the superfluous claims of warming sceptics”. Fred Pearce (again in the UK Guardian) demands we “silence the doubters”. At the 2007 Live Earth concert, Robert F. Kennedy Jr called for sceptics to be “treated as traitors” following this up with the demand that all coal execs “should be in jail for all eternity”.

Fascist intolerance? We’re only getting started.

Alarmist high priest James Hansen has called for sceptics to be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity”. Hansen has also endorsed a book by Keith Farnish that advocates sabotage and environmental terrorism by blowing up dams and demolishing cities to return us to an agrarian age. Hard left Grist magazine columnist David Roberts wants “war crimes trials for these bastards – some sort of climate Nuremberg.” Canadian environmentalist author David Suzuki suggests finding a “legal way of throwing our [climate foot-dragging political] leaders into jail” their climate negligence being “a criminal act”. Wouldn’t the Canadian Civil Liberties Association be appalled? After all, Suzuki is a former board member. Talking Points Memo is fairly representative of the views of hard left websites, asking, “At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers”. Don’t you just love the liberal virtue of tolerance?

Kari Norgaard is professor of climate change at the University of Oregon. At a recent London conference she called for sceptics to be viewed as “racists” and climate scepticism as a “sickness” needing to be “treated”. And the infamous Climategate emails scandal revealed key contributors to the UN IPCC reports threatening science editors, burying data and sounding generally like Richard M. Nixon at his most paranoid.

Surely we can expect better from government-sponsored officials? Apparently not. The above mentioned Professor Norgaard has recently urged President Obama to “ignore democracy” and act on climate via executive fiat. She also backed Obama’s appointment of John P. Holdren – an avowed eugenist who has called for a “planetary regime” to enforce abortions and mandatory sterilization programs – as his senior advisor on science and technology issues. Eugenist? Ah, enforced population control. Isn’t that what the German National Socialists were most famous for practising? Not to mention Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot – leftists all – of course.

In 2007, US EPA chief, Michael T. Eckhart was exposed as authoring an email threatening to “destroy” the career of a climate sceptic. In April this year, a senior Obama-appointee to the EPA boasted that the agency’s “philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of US energy producers – the people without whom all modern society would grind to a halt, by the way.

Let’s sum up for a moment: burning houses, threats to life, limb, business, destroying careers, inflammatory rhetoric, deception, lies and preventing free speech. The message from the eco-fascist Left is resolute: don’t mess with us, or else. These are not guys Joe Public would want to break bread with.

And we should also be clear about this: fascism per se has its roots in the beliefs and ideology of the radical Left, not as is often portrayed, the Right, radical or otherwise. German National socialism (it still exists), communism, even Islamism, all favor Big Government, centralized power and control, the subversion of democratic processes and, especially, the restriction of liberty and free speech. If fascism in any guise doesn’t get what it wants, it has always sought ways of grabbing power first by bullying others to keep silent, then asserting the need to “put democracy on hold”. We can all understand the extreme need in times of war. But as Lovelock says, we have no idea what the climate is doing. Yet the eco-fascists are gaining social headway imposing their will through regulatory ‘laws’ often emanating from unaccountable quangos (quasi-non-governmental organizations), unelected czars and other un-democratic agencies.

Still not convinced things are that bad? Well here’s my last shot.

In April the US Department of Homeland Security released its Environmental Justice Strategy. It makes provision to incorporate the notion of “environmental justice” as a “homeland security” issue. If you thought Homeland was all about keeping citizens safe from terrorists, think again. Under President Obama they are about to create local “federal law enforcement” agents empowered specifically to enforce green laws and regulations in the name of “securing the homeland”. In short, a green police force. If it can happen in the land of the free, how long before the cop green-print recycles to socialist Europe?

In February Audi ran a classy Super Bowl TV ad (see below) featuring the coming eco-cop units as an incentive to buy their latest green car. It’s very funny. But if it doesn’t also send a chill down the spine, you’re probably dead – or Steve Zwick.

“The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.”
– William Golding, Lord of the Flies, Ch. 7

“Which is better–to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?”
– William Golding, Lord of the Flies, Ch. 11